How to Make Aristocrat Sparkling Punch

You'll need red burgundy, champagne, and a couple other ingredients.

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

1 bottle burgundy -- red burgundy

4 ounces brandy -- brandy

2 bottles Brut champagne

1 quart sparkling water

strawberries

2 orange(s)

punch cup

Instructions:

In a punch bowl, dissolve 1/2 cup sugar (or less to taste) in the red burgundy.* Add the brandy, stir, and pour in the brut champagne or reasonable equivalent and the sparkling water. Place a block of ice in the bowl, decorating the top if you wish with strawberries, raspberries, or other fruit in season. Cut the oranges into thin wheels and float them in the punch.

* In Benchley's day, this would've been a California "burgundy," but we suggest you go French (you can even use a decent Côtes du Rhône).

The Wondrich Take:

Fresh from a few months in New York, Robert Benchley -- so the story goes -- is sitting by the pool at the old Garden of Allah, up there on Sunset Boulevard, drinking gin and vermouth in just proportion with the usual crew. Humphrey Bogart, character actor Charlie Butterworth, George S. Kaufman, John McClain (the playboy/journalist who used to go out with Dorothy Parker, not the wiseass cop from Die Hard), a couple of starlets (including Natalie "Mrs. Thurston Howell" Schaefer), and a screenwriter or two. At some point, Errol Flynn comes out of his bungalow, dives into the pool, and starts methodically doing laps. This does not go unremarked by the Benchley crew. "Why don't you get out of that wet pool and into a dry martini?" "What's wrong, tired of exercising indoors?" (Flynn was always -- well, you know.) "What is that stuff you're swimming in?" Finally, Flynn takes the bait.

"All right, Benchley, you old soak. I'll tell you what. You swim across this pool once, just once, and I'll pay your bar tab for a month."

"The pool? Come on, Flynn, think big. How's this, old man -- I'll bet you a straight thousand dollars I can swim all the way to Catalina." Now, Benchley's a big man, but soft and paunchy, and nobody's idea of an athlete. In other words, it's a bet. Everybody likes to take advantage of a drunk. In no time they round up a couple of cars, stir up some martinis for the road, and head down to the ocean.

So there they are, standing around on a pier somewhere near Long Beach. Along the way, Flynn's picked up a cute little carhop. Somebody else has bought a case of beer. The martinis are long gone. Benchley takes his jacket off. "That's it, out there?"

"That's right. 20 miles. You're sure you want to go through with it?"

"Flynn, when a Benchley gives his word, he gives his bond."

"But really, old shoe, fun is fun. Let's just drop it." Meanwhile, everybody's exchanging private little glances behind Flynn's back. Without a word, Benchley strips down to boxers and undershirt and pitches himself right in. There's a mighty splash, he swims about 12 feet and then, convulsed in laughter, calls for a rope. Everybody's furious, except for Bogart and Butterworth, who are laughing. Bogie, you see, had quietly pulled everyone aside and convinced them that Benchley was a powerful swimmer (his new York doctors had made him start, y'see, and he just took to it...), and that paunch he was hiding under his shirt was in fact a cork life-vest. So when Butterworth started making a little book on the proceedings....

Which just goes to show, you can lead a drunk to water, but you can't make him think. We don't know if there's a word of truth in any of that, but if Benchley had made it all the way across the Gulf of Santa Catalina, he could've rewarded himself with a bowl of this light summer quencher. All we know about it (besides the fact that it's really quite tasty) is that it comes from Catalina, and that it first surfaces in Esquire's February 1942 "Potables" column. That "Aristocrat"? Wishful thinking, unless you're okay with the phrase "movie royalty."